Wednesday, September 23, 2015

A New 101 Story Seattle Skyscraper Is Not America's Biggest Boondoggle

Continuing on with our popular series of items I read in west coast online newspapers, usually the Seattle Times, which is not something I have ever read, or expect to read, in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram about a similar thing happening in the Fort Worth zone.

This morning it was once again the Seattle Times where I read of yet one more building project in downtown Seattle, of the sort one does not read about happening in downtown Fort Worth.

This time it is a 101 story skyscraper, a mixed use building with 1,200 residential units, 150 hotel rooms and a lot of office and retail space.

This skyscraper will once again have Seattle having the tallest building on the west coast. Currently the 73 story U.S. Bank Tower in Los Angles, at 1,018 feet, is the tallest, taller than second tallest on the west coast, Seattle's Columbia Center at 76 stories, but reaching only 933 feet high.

The article about the new 101 story Seattle skyscraper did not say how tall it was expected to grow.

Since I've been in the Fort Worth zone I have only seen one semi-tall building built. The Omni Convention Center Hotel.

A month or so ago the extremely erudite, Mr. Spiffy, opined as to why downtown Fort Worth is a moribund ghost town with little new construction.

America's Biggest Boondoggle, also known as the Trinity River Central City Uptown Panther Island Vision Boondoggle, is stifling new development because developers do not know if America's Biggest Boondoggle will ever come to fruition. And if it miraculously does come to fruition, will what The Boondoggle has, at times, referred to as Uptown, be where one would want to put ones development dollars, instead of the current downtown Fort Worth zone, south of The Boondoggle's Uptown, currently bizarrely known as Panther Island?

Recently I was sent an email from which I learned a reporter for the Star-Telegram, for some reason, thinks The Boondoggle has a projected project completion timeline of 2023. I have read this nowhere else.

How this relatively simple project can take far longer than far more complicated engineering projects, be it the Empire State Building, the Golden Gate Bridge, the Panama Canal and many other feats of engineering, documented on this very blog, to have been completed in a shorter time period than America's Biggest Boondoggle has been boondoggling along, is a perplexing mystery.

Even more mysterious is why is it the locals, or the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, don't insist in getting some answers as to why this project has turned into America's Biggest Boondoggle?

Currently, the only construction project that I am aware of, anywhere near the downtown Fort Worth zone, is those three simple little bridges The Boondoggle is building over dry land, with a four year construction timeline, to connect Fort Worth's mainland to an imaginary island.

Why are other big American cities currently experiencing a construction boom in their downtown's, such as what is taking place in Dallas, Los Angeles, Seattle, and others, while Fort Worth is moribund?

Don't count on that new building staying at 101 stories. The building across the street was limited to 76 as reported in http://www.bizjournals.com/seattle/blog/2015/09/proposed-101-story-seattleskyscraper-is-so-tall.html